14 Facts About Harold Gray

Harold Lincoln Gray was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip Little Orphan Annie.

Harold Gray was born in Kankakee, Illinois on January 20,1894, to Estella Mary and Ira Lincoln Gray, a farmer.

Harold Gray grew up on farms in Illinois and Indiana, and worked in construction to pay his college tuition at Purdue University.

Harold Gray graduated with a degree in engineering by 1917.

Harold Gray could not immediately get cartooning work, but McCutcheon's influence got him work as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune before he enlisted in the military for World War I, where he was a bayonet instructor for six months.

Harold Gray married Winifred Frost in 1929, and the couple moved to Greens Farms, Connecticut, spending winters in La Jolla, California.

Harold Gray made no secret of his dislike for the New Deal ways of President Franklin Roosevelt and would often decry unions and other things he saw as impediments to the hard-working American way of life.

Critic Jeet Heer, who did his thesis on Harold Gray and wrote introductions to IDW's Little Orphan Annie collections, commented:.

Harold Gray fell into the anti-FDR camp and Annie became much more explicitly right-wing.

Harold Gray sometimes ghosted Little Joe, the strip by his assistant Ed Leffingwell which was continued by Ed's brother Robert.

Harold Gray died of cancer at the Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla on May 9,1968, at the age of 74.

Harold Gray's work is in the Special Collections Department at the Boston University Library.

The Harold Gray collection includes artwork, printed material, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs.

The collection contains a scrapbook, a short story by Harold Gray titled "Annie", letters, postcards and telegrams from 1937 to 1967, including correspondence with Collier's, Purdue University, Al Capp and Mort Walker.